Former Detroit Pistons ‘Bad Boy’ Isiah Thomas continued to keep busy in school after a Hall of Fame playing career and multiple years as a basketball coach. Today, it paid off for him.

Thomas graduated with a masters of education from the University of California at Berkeley, tweeting his cap and gown and retweeting congratulations to other UC Berkeley graduates.

He said in a recent Huffington Post story that he has “studied the connections between education and sports. In pursuing this degree, I have had the time to reflect on how we, as a society, make available access to education for athletes, especially black male athletes.”